Christmas 2010

Fireplace at Gia's Restaurant in Logan

Matt's Christmas Tree 2010

Outside the Sherwood Hills Resort

Sherwood Hills Resort

Randy at the Dining Room in Sherwood Hills Resort

Randy with our Waitress Sherwood Hills Resort

Randy on Christmas Day in His New Cat Shirt
From Tina and Kipp

Gimli Enjoying Christmas
He Wants to Be a Present

Even though I do not usually like the holidays, this Christmas was pretty good.  Everyone was so good to us and all our gifts were wonderful. The clothes, candy, blankets, movies and cat memorabilia was so fun to receive. I will probably gain a ton with all the sweets, and Randy will have a blood sugar attack, but that always happens and it would not be Christmas without it. A special thanks to Monica for the Carrillo Family DVD. It did make me shed a few tears and I just cannot believe how fast time flies.  A gift, no matter how expensive can not be as wonderful as our family and memories of our lives together. Life is so short that we need to really love each other and enjoy the time we have here with one another.

Thanks to Jay and Monica for the wonderful time we had at the Bar J Wranglers. Their company was great and the show was so entertaining and fun. We enjoyed having dinner with Monica and Jay in Logan. We had a wonderful experience staying at the Sherwood Hills
Resort in Sardine Canyon. It was very snowy and the drive was difficult, but the experience made up for it all.  It was a winter wonderland there.  While I hate the grayness of winter, there are some things that winter brings that are beautiful.

I want to wish all a Very Happy New Year. I hope you had a good Christmas and that next year will bring you all the blessings you can possibly want.

Happy Holidays

Boy, time really flies these days. Seems like we just had Thanksgiving and Christmas. Needless to say, I am not prepared for Christmas yet. I do plan on having Thanksgiving here at my home with just Randy and John and Kathy.

One thing that is bad about the holidays, is that it's usually stormy and very hard to travel to visit family who live far away.  Randy does not like to fly and I don't either especially now that they have their new security screening. Because of my knee replacement, I am always selected to get more security than others. I show them the card from my DR but they still have to screen me for a long time and pat me down all over. And now that they have this new screening going on, I will probably have to go through the scanner (they can see you naked) and also be patted down even more intensely. I am sorry, but do I look like a terrorist?  Anyway, flying is expensive too. So unless we have a real global warming and fast, I don't think we will be going to visit anyone for the Holidays. No matter if I travel west to Seattle or east to Wisconsin or even Idaho, we would have to travel through mountains and storms to get there.

Maybe we should have a new tradition of having the Holidays in the summer. Ha Ha.

But I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving and a Merry Christmas.
Love, Mom

OUR LATEST NEWS

Kelby Carrillo
His Blessing Day

 

Kelby Halloween 2010

Kinley Halloween 2010

Matt's Girls Halloween 2010

Matt and his Pumpkins Halloween 2010

Savannah and Friend Halloween in Wis 2010

I have included some Halloween photos from Matt and Tammy

Tina and Kipp Halloween 2010

At Tina and Kipp's Halloween Party 2010

And I could not resist a couple of Tina and Kipp's Halloween Photos for those who don't see them on Facebook

Not a lot has been going on lately. I have joined the Fitness Center with my Medicare card and Kathy and I have really enjoyed going there. I have worked with the weights and the bikes for heart rate and calorie burning. I have used the pool and done lift ups in the pool. I have enjoyed the hot tub, steam room and sauna. We have been going twice a week.  I really am enjoying it.  I probably won't lose any weight but it does boost my spirits and invigorates me.

John's store closed but because they like him so much, he was moved to the old Albertson's (now Fresh Market) on Center Street in Provo. They wanted him so much that they even cut other people's hours to get him on there. It is really good, now he does not have to file unemplyment and lose his insurance.

We had a good time a couple of weeks ago at Monica and Jay's. They invited us for dinner and we went to see Lacey get her young woman's medalion.  Their poor doggy swallowed a ball and had to have an operation to remove it and they had to take some of his intestine out. Very costly but Jay loves his Seymour. He is a Basset hound.  Peter is working in Lincoln NE and has met a nice girl from Laramie who lives on a ranch. They are getting married in May.

My brother Chris was here because his father-in-law passed away. He was 94 years old. I visited with him a little after the funeral. That man was a millionaire and Chris had to dump some of his money so he bought another house and is renting it to his son.  Chris mother-in-law, known as Mrs Kitchen is still with us. She taught a couple of my kids in school.

We are very tired of dealing with our travel trailer. That place that manufactured it must have hired kids off the street.  The shelves broke, some of the fittings were bad etc. Then we noticted that the siding was buckled. So after they had fixed all that other stuff they had to take it back to Twin Falls Idaho and fix the siding. They brought back in worse condition than when they took it first. The siding was even worse and they had screwed up the roof while putting on the siding. And the door was out of alignment. So it is now back at the manufacterer again. I hate to see what it will be like when they bring it back again. If that happens, they owe us a whole new travel trailer. Good thing it isn't camping season.

Randy is still set for hip replacement in January. He got a new laptop and hopes to use during his recovery. We are hoping it helps with all the pain he has had especially if he over does it. Kipp was kind enough to help us out in getting it to work on the Internet.

Chris, Robin Elain and Dean

Mrs Kitchen, Paul, Elaine, Paul's Boys, Chris and Dean

Dean, Me, Chris and Elaine

We are enjoying our new Roku player. We can watch unlimited movies from Netflix without having to download them from the computer. Now we can cut down some of our cable but of course, we still have to have SCI FI. (Randy's favorite genre)

The weather here has been beautiful but I know it will not last. My mood swings come and go but are better with medication that I finally found that works.  I miss those I do not get to see very often but I am thankful for blogging, Facebook, cells phones and e-mail. What did we ever do without those kinds of things?

Another Day of Venting

John's job at Fresh Market is ending. The company has been losing money. Why is it that some people have all the breaks and some get none?  John is such a good worker. I hope he can find something soon.  He should have stayed at his old job that was Albertson's because they were bought by Ridley's and they are doing so good that they are expanding their store size. But he did not know that when he was offered the job at Fresh Market. Albertson's was for sale then and nobody knew if it would get bought out or not.

It's hard to keep your spirits up in this economy. My property tax has gone way up even though my house is worth less. I know I should not complain because I do have it better than a lot of people. I would not even be this well off if weren't for Alex having all those problems with his knees and he didn't even get the rewards he deserved. Life is not fair but that's the way it has always been.

I was hoping to get over this depression but it's really hard and Randy has been in so much pain and I do hope the hip replacement will help him.

Latest News

We had a nice ride up Springville and Payson Canyon. We drove the Nebo Loop. The leaves are changing and it was a very pretty ride.

Other news is that Randy is having total hip replacement in January. His hips have hurt for years. I hope the surgery will help him and free him from pain.

We have been doing a lot of Fall cleaning. We cleaned the little shed and found out that Alex had even more collectibles in there than upstairs. They were still in the sacks that he had when he bought them. We threw a lot of old stuff out but we are going through the collectibles. We cleaned out a lot of stuff in the upstairs room but we still have a lot of things there that we have to store. Alex's things are still on the shelves and I guess I will leave them there for now but I really need to dust the shelves. In going through a lot of the things, I found the Old Carrillo Chronicles (the newsletters we used to send out) It was very interesting to read through them. They are here if anyone wants to come and read them and reminisce about the past. Some of the grandkids weren't even born when those newsletters were created.

I also found a TO DO List that Alex had made out in 2003 where he had a list of errands and chores he needed to do and some were crossed off as he did them. That was just a little sad for me.  When cleaning out the shed and seeing his work that he did when he built made me realize even more how much talent he had.

As for me, I have had a lot of mood swings and I am seeing the DR again to see if he can give me any help. I hope all of you are doing fine. I can't believe it will be Christmas in no time at all. The older I get, the faster time passes. I hope to enjoy life more because I know all our time is short upon this earth.

Still a Little Sad, Not Sure Why

: (
Still feeling emotionally unstable. Next week I am joining the Rec Center to walk and swim and hopefully boost my spirits. I can go for free with Medicare.

Trip to Wisconsin

We left for Wisconsin on September 12th. We stayed the first night at the Little America Hotel in Cheyenne WY.  We then traveled all through the flat and boring state of Nebraska.  Randy wanted to take route 90 instead of the regular way to get to Wisconsin so although we did go through some of Iowa, we also went into Minnesota for a few miles.  The second night, we stayed in Lincoln Nebraska. We went swimming in the pool and sat the hot tub there.

The third night we crossed over into Wisconsin near the Mississippi and stayed at La Crosse Wis.  The next day we drove east towards Green Bay.  We saw lots of pretty green fields, fir trees and other trees and lots of farms and barns and even a goat farm. Everything was so clean looking and so well tended. There is no desert there so there were no dried up grass or weeds. There are also no mountains, so the sky looks very large.

We arrived at Tammy's beautiful home around noon the third day. It was over cast and damp and looked a lot like the Pacific Northwest.  Tammy's house is located on a cul-de-sac where there are about 4 other homes and they are all high end homes. She lives next to a DR. She gave us the grand tour. She has posted photos of her home on her blog so I won't say anymore except that the house is very large, beautiful and has a lot of storage space and a beautiful yard with fountains, fenced in, private and very green and she does not have to water. She has two decks, upper and lower and an outside balcony on the 2nd floor.  I think her house sits on 1/2 acre. She got the house for a steal and the most wonderful thing about it, is that the previous owners left a piano, lots of wall art, all the window fashions, art and paintings, 2 beds and bedding, end tables and patio furniture just to name a few. The house has 3 fireplaces and a hot tub. We sat in the hot tub during our visit. She actually has three different living rooms, the formal living room, the TV Room and the family Room.  There are lots of shelves everywhere. She has a formal dining room and hutch. It's too bad everyone is so far away because that place was just made for entertaining.

Green Bay is a very clean city with lots of beautiful homes which are well tended. There are lots of beautiful churches, mostly Catholic. I did not see any LDS churches so that was weird. The church bells ring every day from the Catholic school near by.

Charlie is a wonderful cook. He fixed his famous hamburgers and his wonderful turkey. He and Randy went to the cheese factory (Wisconsin is known for cheese) and got some cheese curds. They were yummy.  Jacob got a permanent job there packaging baby wipes and it's right near where Charlie works.

We took a trip on the Green Bay Peninsula to Door County. We saw lots of wineries, bed and breakfast places, tourist attractions, and just beautiful scenery. It was kind of cold and damp though. We went to Lake Michigan which is one of the great lakes. You cannot see where it ends. It seems as big as the ocean. There is no swimming there though. The water is very cold. We enjoyed eating at a little dig Called "The Rusty Tractor." I also bought some fudge at one of the little shops in the area.

While there, we also went to a train museum where Randy was excited that he could hardly contain himself. His grandpa used to work for the railroad and got on the train with him many times. These were the old black coal burning steam engines. There was a large display of trains there but Randy's favorite was the Big Boy which was enormous.

We were going to go home through South Dakota to Mt Rushmore and on to Devils Tower in Wyoming, but we were just too worn out. I hope we can go next time we go that way and we should go there first before going to Tammy's so we won't be so worn out.  I am going to have to start flying again because it's so far to visit her. Randy won't fly, so I guess I will go alone. However, we will both try to drive there again in the summer when it will be warm there. 

One the way home, we had tons of rain coming down really fast. We stayed in Austin MN the first night, Grand Island NE the 2nd and Little America in Wyo the third night. We had a great time. It's good to be home though, but our place just doesn't measure up to Tammy's place.  And I need to mention that I did have to go buy warmer clothes because I did not bring enough with me. Tammy said the weather had been nice until we got there.

Summer News

Summer is nearly over and that is so hard to believe! We started out in April going to Crystal Hot Springs and camping there with Jay and Monica. Next, we camped at Palisades in Sanpete County. Then we went to Arizona to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. We rode the train and it was very neat experience. We stayed in our trailer in Williams Arizona which is the gateway to the south rim. It is on Route 66 there and it's like an old 50's town with a 50's theme, malts, ice cream sodas and juke boxes in all the eating establishments. Then we went down to the hot part of Arizona in Mesa, (we left the trailer at the campsite) and visited with Randy's friends, Starr, Lisa and Marc.

Then we went camping up Timpangos area at Timpanooke then Little Mill and Granite Flat. Tina and her family were camped in that area for a couple of days with Jesse and Raia so we visited with them. Then we went back to Little Mill and to a very lovely spot right by the river. Then we went camping at Lakeside Campground near Utah Lake. Monica and Jay joined us there. I had a good time swimming there and Matt and Kelly came up for Matt's birthday. After doing all that camping, we are a little tired and so we are done camping for the year. In all, we camped over 30 days this summer. In May, two little babies arrived: Kelby from Matt and Kelly, Kennedy from Contessa and Lorin. In August another little one arrived: Keira from Felicia and Brandon.

Tammy moved to Wisconsin so we had a farewell party for her. We also had a baby shower for Michael and Brooke who are expecting a baby boy in December. Then Jennifer and Rob and the kids were in town and they stayed at Kipp's canyon house and we went there for a BBQ until Jennifer had to head back home. They had been on very long road trip for two weeks.

Our next adventure is that we are going to travel over 1500 miles to Wisconsin to visit Tammy and see her new place. We want to visit before winter because winters are bad in the midwest. We will travel through Wyoming, Nebraska and Iowa to get there. I have been to Wyoming, Nebraska and Iowa but never to Wisconsin. I wish to see the Great Lakes as I have always wanted to. On the way home, we may head back through South Dakota and see MT Rushmore and then on to northeast Wyoming to see Devil's tower. After that, I guess we will just be stuck at home for a long and dreary winter. I hope we can camp again next year. It is a lot of work but something we both love. It is getting harder for Randy because of his arthritis but it keeps us both active at least.

Hope all of you enjoyed the summer. All our love. Rita and Randy

Tear Water Tea

I have had an exciting summer and I need to start writing more in this blog. I have tons of things to write about but I just can't seem to get into it. For some reason, depression has reared it's ugly head and I am not sure what the reason is.  There is very little reason for this to be happening. But it just doesn't seem to want to leave me much as I would like it to.

I keep thinking about the past, Alex, my kids and how everything has changed and that is the way things are supposed to be. I now have an even larger family with new little ones. I have a lot to be thankful for. I have good husband and children, time to travel and many other blessings, so I can't say what is wrong. I worry all the time that something will happen and I don't even know what it is or what it will be. I know a lot this started when I realized that I could not ever have a close relationship with some of my family. And my baby girl moved away but I know I can talk with her on the phone or on Facebook but I will miss my Savannah. A lot of family members live far apart. I also think I may still be suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome for what happened over 6 years ago with all those deaths and all my illnesses. I was so busy with work and trying to take care of my parent's affairs and dealing with family members that maybe I just didn't get a chance to grieve properly.  I had to put my feelings on the back burner. Now that I have to time to sit back and enjoy life, something is coming back to haunt me.

I hope I soon start feeling better and can get back with the program. I need to get over it but I can't really lay a finger on what I have to get over. I have a lot of things I want to put in my blog but right now, I just can't seem to tackle it. One of my daughters said she had not cried for a long time. I cry everyday. I hope it heals me. If I knew what it was that was causing this tear water tea, maybe it would help, but I just don't know. It's hard when you don't even know why it is happening and then feeling guilty that you should not be feeling this way. I just needed to vent and I love all my family and I know with time I will feel better.

Tammy's Goodbye Party

We all had a wonderful time for Tammy's party. Tammy, Michael, Brooke, Jacob and Savannah, Monica, Lacey (Jay had to work) Tina, Kipp, Felicia, Raia, Jesse, Keira, John, Kathy, Robin, Don, Britni and their dog Cookie all came as well as Randy, (now known as Grandy) Matt, Kelly, Mattiejo, Kinley, Kelby and me were there. We saw a video of Michael's baby boy to be born in Dec. And Monica did a wonderful presentation for a goobye present to Tammy. It was done on the computer as a slide show. Tammy is moving on Aug 27.


Those who missed this party missed a great time.! Pictures to follow.

New Family Member

Keira Babb
6 pounds 7 OZ
Born July 30, 2010
Parents
Felicia and Brandon Babb

Keira
Right after her Birth

Father's Day

I would like to thank Kipp for inviting us to a wonderful Father's Day breakfast at the park for Father's Day. He introduced me as his mother and Randy as his father. Not Step Dad or Mother-in-law.  He gave Randy a really nice shirt. I also got to visit with Tina, Marissa, Dom, Felicia and Jesse and Raia.

Thank you Kipp!